By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed more public funding of religious entities in an important ruling in favor of two Christian families who challenged a Maine tuition assistance program that excluded private schools that promote religion.
In the latest in a series of decisions in recent years expanding religious rights, the justices in a 6-3 decision overturned a lower court ruling that had rejected the families’ claims of religious discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion.
The court’s conservative justices were in the majority in the ruling, authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, and its liberal members in dissent.
The decision builds upon the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-court-religion-idINKBN2412HY in a case from Montana that paved the way for more taxpayer dollars to flow to religious schools.
Maine provides public funds to pay for tuition at private high schools of a family’s choice in some sparsely populated areas of the northeastern state that lack public secondary schools. The schools receiving this tuition assistance under the program must be “nonsectarian” and are excluded if they promote a particular religion and present material “through the lens of that faith.”
The ruling offered the latest example of the Supreme Court, with its increasingly assertive conservative majority, making the expansion of expanding religious liberty a high priority in recent years. The justices have been receptive to claims made by plaintiffs – often conservative Christians – of government hostility toward religion including in the educational context.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
